The world has changed since my last post.

We are back in Hamilton having left Tanzania Monday March 23 - now three weeks ago.  The aeroplane tickets saga is a post on its own but suffice to say I’m on first name terms with Judy from Ethiopian Airways.

I had started packing.

Our departure from Arusha was rather rushed in the end.  We woke on Monday Mar 23, still just half packed up, to the news that our Emirates flights, organised by AVI and scheduled for that evening after a flight with Ethiopian via Addis Ababa to Dubai, had been cancelled over night.  I emailed the AVI travel agent and we planned for staying in Arusha.  I rang my brother Cam for his birthday and told him we wouldn’t be leaving after all.  Five minutes later the agent ordered us straight to the airport and promised tickets for the Qatar flight.  So suitcases were untidily finalised, keys left with a neighbour to empty the fridge and hurried and most unsatisfactory goodbyes said to guards and housekeepers - no hugs and no language to explain why not! We flew via Dar es Salaam and Doha to Perth and then by Qantas to Melbourne Reagan’s boys arrived with our car and we drove straight home.

Curios that made it home, there are more still in our house in Arusha!

It’s strange to be home.  We survived our 14 days quarantine with the help of Toby as well as several friends who shopped for us and dropped off meals. (Everyone has wanted to be helpful!)  My first trip to the supermarket showed the reality of what we’d read about in the newspapers.  No toilet paper, no rice, no pasta, no flour. People were shopping like automatons - just looking straight ahead - no smiles, no greeting.  It was very unsettling.  But now we’re into the new rhythm of life and planning for when we’ll be able to return to Tanzania.  Our assignments with the Australian Volunteers Program have been officially terminated and I have submitted my final report.

Library monitor Maria made sure all books were returned

We tried to tie up loose ends before we left Arusha.  It was very difficult as so much was in a state of disruption.  A decision was made by the centre where I worked to send the trainees home early for Easter.  All the books were returned to the library.  I knew I would be returning to Australia before the decision was made to close the centre so all the self education resources are prepared and ready for use.

We had bought a laptop computer to replace Steve’s MacBook that died after a whisky-related accident and we have left it to be used by staff at the centre.  It has all the documents I was working from so trainers will be able to update and/or repurpose whatever they’d like, and reprint the most useful worksheets.  My laminator and several hundred pouches are there to be used as well.  As with our departure from our home in Sakina, leaving the centre was for me so difficult as there could be no hugs, and explanations were too difficult.  The trainees had been evacuated swiftly - before I arrived on the Friday so I missed saying goodbye to most of them - but the ones who still remained enjoyed the lollies I’d brought to be shared into pockets for their journey.  The Flying Medical Service pilots were all out on various duties too, and the Dispensary staff run off their feet as is typical on a Friday so it was a rather dismal farewell.

We will return to Arusha when we can - we still have a house and car there, and a granddaughter who has been promised a safari in Tanzania.  Whether it will be later this year or not until next year, or even the year after, remains to be seen.

My quarantine task was painting the deck that had just been finished before we left Hamilton in March last year.  It's all ready now for future parties.

Love from Jenny

Progress

The seasons just don’t know what they’re doing.  The ‘Long Wet’ seems to have started after a very short and wet ‘Short dry’.  Heavy rain over night one day last week translated to snow on Mt Meru that was there until lunchtime.  Mt Meru is in our ‘backyard’ though it is often shrouded in cloud and we don’t see it for days at a time.

I have spent February and March working on my Community Service Grant project funded by The Planet Wheeler Foundation (The family that started Lonly Planet Guides) through AVI.  It has the glorious title Olkokola Centre for the Physically Handicapped Self-Education Resource Centre.  The people here call it Maktaba (the library)!  And it is a library with the book borrowing going well and (so far) only one book having gone missing.  The student monitor in charge of borrowing is very strict!

I use it it as a small classroom.  I love my small maths classes - I feel like I’m doing something totally practical.  The masonry boys are doing calculatons on how many bricks are needed to build various size walls and houses; the carpentry boys are problem solving on how many pieces of timber of can be cut from various lengths of wood; agrivet are doing seed and fertiliser rate calculations; and tailoring are learning “fractions for inches and decimals for centimetres!”  Everyone is learning about time and money.  Over the next few months I will need to work out how I can make the learning more student initiated with the new group that start in August - we’ll be down to our last few months here by then.

I’m also getting all the resources I ‘ve been making sorted and packaged so they can be used independently.  They  love playing with the 'money'. 

The centre where Steve works is just down the road from my work so I took our Agri-Vet students on an excursion there last week.  ECHO is a resource we need to make more use of.  All our students could learn so much about the high nutrition plants ECHO is promoting, and it's information that would be so useful when they return to their villages.

 Our centre is very agricultural - this was the view out of the library window on Friday.

Our students, when they leave, take with them the tools of their trade.  In February 28 brand new sewing machines and stands arrived and had to be unpacked and assembled.  Then they were disassembled and repacked.  Carpentry and masonry hand tools have been bought as well and the container is chockers with the gear that students will take home.  The carpentry boys are busy making the wooden chests that each student will have to hold their equipment.  Everyone is so excited!  Though ‘Graduation’ isn’t until June they can see the end in sight. 

 Today is International Womens Day.  On Thursday I put up a little poster saying (in Swahili) “Women hold up half the sky”.  This is a quote from Mao Zedong. One of the boys protested.  He told me “No teacher, men hold up half the sky!” Hmm.  More work on fractions needed!

I couldn't resist this one

We’ll be back in Australia (we hope!) in the two weeks around Easter.  The coronavirus could be an issue if the PM and his government are still looking for distractions from their increasingly brazen transgressions - no point going home for two weeks self-isolation, justified or not!

Maybe see you for Easter, otherwise Karibuni you’re all welcome here in Arusha! 

Love from Jenny

Back at work

It’s been three weeks now since we returned from Serengeti (and we went back to work!  We’re not just here to safari) and two weeks since we farewelled our friends Lou and Rob back to Australia. If you’d like to read the tale of our safari — long version with excellent pictures — go to Steve’s blog where the story is there in 3 instalments.  Suffice for me to say we had a lovely time (you can’t see too many giraffes and flamingos) and it was great to relax after a stressful and tiring 8 months of work though safariing can be stressful and tiring in its own way. (Again, see Steve’s blog!)

The trainees at Olkokola have been back for 4 weeks and have been very busy.  The carpentry boys have been making the furniture for the new education room.  Last year were awarded a grant by the Wheeler Foundation to set up a self education room / library and I have been working on that.  All the self education resources I have been developing will be housed there and our trainees can work at their own pace in their own time on literacy, numeracy and other skills.  The carpentry boys were also working on a cupboard for The Plaster House which they were rightly very proud of.

The masonry boys have been working on water diversion infrastructure — drains and channels — which is getting a workout currently as the ‘short wet’ goes on and on.  It doesn’t look like we are going to get a ‘dry’ before the ‘long wet’ starts.  The boys also helped the carpentry trainees on renovations to the education room which has a new ceiling, new power points and light and is freshly painted.

The tailors have been busy making school uniforms as the new school year began but have also made the first hundred washable pads for the 4AllFoundation and another 120 that female students and teachers have been given.  We are in the process of setting up the enterprise with proper book keeping and inventory management as an example of how a business should be run,  Everyone should be able to see that minimising waste increases profit — an economic, environmental and social win!

I haven’t forgotten the Agro-Vet trainees.  I discovered a Kenyan public television series called Shamba Shape Up.  It gives good advice on all aspects of farming and livestock management in upbeat 30 minute episodes.  I have downloaded the swahili language versions of all 9 series (nearly 90GB!) and they are on the centre’s laptop computer.  I also indexed the 168 episodes so they could easily find the relevant ones to the topic being studied. 

I have started working on a website for the centre.  Have a look at it if you have a chance and send me feedback.  Here is a link. It is still a work in progress so ideas to progress it will be gratefully received.  You could challenge yourself with the Swahili version!

Sometimes I feel useful at work, sometimes I don’t, but being part of this community is fun and uplifting and the welcome I receive every morning makes my day!

And it's not all work - Australia Day BBQ Sunday last, welcome home to the landlord party Tuesday night and on Thursday night the inaugural Rotary Club of Arusha West Trivia Night at which our team - the NIDA Needers (a story for another day!) - came 3rd out of 23 teams

We'll be home in Australia for 2 weeks around Easter, maybe we'll see you then! Love from Jenny.

There's always something to do

The students finished for the year last Friday and have all returned to their villages for the Christmas break.  Most have gone on buses north, west and south.  The more remote have flown on FMS clinic days to their homes.  A pilot reported to me there were tears of joy from family when one of the amputees walked across the airstrip on his new leg without crutches!

Of course there was a party before departure - pilau, chicken and chips and salad.  We contributed three watermelons and a bag of lollies which were appreciated very much.

This week I have been making washable/reusable pads, and bags to keep them in, which will be distributed to school girls in the Usa River area by a Dutch NGO called 4ALLFoundation.  I’m making a trial production run of 100 pads and 20 bags to test time taken (remembering how to use a treadle machine was surprisingly quick!) and materials needed.  The production element that takes the longest time is the cutting out.  I have to figure out a way to speed that up - I’m sure applying mathematics will be the key!

So this week could have been a bit quiet.  The (American) dentist who comes occasionally to run free clinics (extractions and fillings) and distribute toothbrushes and advice had one day working out of the container next to the sewing room so I had plenty of company that day.  

Actually I received plenty of attention - someone using a sewing machine in a public setting must be selling something!  So I had people wandering in to see what they could buy.  Women really liked the idea and wanted to take them away then and there - I kept having to say they weren't ready yet (I still have press studs to sew on).  Men went one of two ways when I told them what I was making.  They either looked puzzled and embarrassed and went away quickly or tried to figure out alternate uses that would suit them.  It’s funny how men sometimes think there should be nothing that excludes them.  Anyway, if we can get excess production we’ll have no trouble selling (or giving away) the extras.

(The taboo around around discussing menstruation and sex is a huge problem so I was right in there telling men, women and children all about it - my swahili vocabulary is growing.)

This photo was on my Facebook a few weeks ago but I have included it for those who don’t see FB.  There are still so many things here that make us laugh!

And Happy Christmas to you all!

Love from Jenny

A little more on November and into December

Our mamas and babies are heading home to their villages over the next few days - one on a bus and the other two will fly back with FMS when there is next a clinic at their village.  We hope to get feedback over the next few months on the reactions of the family and friends to lack of a 'cure' and also to assess whether the mothers are continuing with the therapies to strengthen the babies' muscles.  Data on this will be important in deciding the next step in this project.  We have to weigh up the positives - improvement in the babies head control, education of the mothers in what cerebral palsy is, mothers realising they are not unique in having babies with special needs (the 'holiday' in a guest house with no housework and all meals provided and time to sit and chat with other mothers in a similar situation was something they all appreciated mightily!) against the negatives - possible unrealistic expectations and dashed hopes,  reduction in respect for what modern medicine is able to do leading to failure to immunise or bring health concerns to the clinic staff.  We may be doing more harm than good.   

Clearly education is required so mothers recognise signs of cerebral palsy in their babies and get early intervention.  Also better birthing practices and education on the dangers of prolonged labours could reduce the incidence of CP.  In rural Tanzania over half of deliveries are attended by traditional birth attendants with no medical training and often old wives tales prevail - for instance mothers are told not to eat any meat or eggs in the last 3 months of pregnancy to reduce the baby's size for an easier birth but this also damages the baby's brain and overall development, and the mother's health. 

Also education about what modern medicine can and can't fix - there is no dawa (drug) to cure the common cold, or regrow an amputated limb or fix a damaged brain.  But good ante-natal care and birthing practices would go a long way to addressing the problems of peri-natal and maternal mortality which are still far too common here and of other birth complications including fistula in mothers and brain damage, due to lack of oxygen during protracted birth, in babies.

The ethical question remains - is it wrong to prolong the life of a community member who cannot be maintained realistically in a semi-nomadic community?  There is no alternative community for these children to live in.  They will mostly die young.  Their needs may be neglected because there are not enough resources to go around and, as the disabled are considered a burden and a curse, they may be hidden away where neighbours cannot see them and have no intellectual stimulation, no life.  Yet these babies are loved!  I see it in the interactions between these mamas and their babies.  They have agreed to come to Arusha because they want what is best for their babies.  I cannot say it would be better if these babies had never lived.  It is a question with no right answer.

As promised, here is a pic from the baptism on November 17.  This lovely baby is the nephew of the baptismal girl.  He's not totally impressed with being handed to the mzungu but did doze off.

And a picture of a giraffe is always worth posting - from a trip to Arusha NP on November 9 with fresh, new volunteers recently arrived from Port Fairy.  l love being with friends when they see their first giraffe - it's such a magical experience.

And our girls starting to line up for a photo with the speakers from Femme International who came on Thursday Dec 5 for their final follow up visit on matters related to menstrual health - these girls inspire me with their resilience and perseverance in the face of huge barriers.

Hopefully one more post before the end of the year,

Love from Jenny

Where did November go?

Well another month has gone and I’ve been procrastinating over this post for weeks!  This morning (and the next morning as it happens!) I’m listening to the cricket Aus v Pak, biting the bullet and getting my thoughts down on (virtual) paper…

The month started well with a visit by Zoe Manders-Jones, Program Director of the Australian Volunteers Program and Colin Collett Van Rooyen , Regional Director of AVP.  It’s always a pleasure to show visitors around Olkokola Catholic Mission, I am so proud to show off all the good work that is done by the Flying Medical Service (FMS), the Olkokola Dispensary and the Centre for the Physically Handicapped.  We had been successful in getting a grant from Australian Volunteers in this year’s Community Grants Scheme so I was able to show the visitors what we planned to do.  The weather was perfect and Mt Meru was on show.  The centre is in a lovely setting.

I have also felt like I’ve made progress on other fronts, visiting the Teacher Training College that specialises in  Special Needs to organise to have a teacher for the deaf visit for some specialist training for our trainers next year (I hope it wasn’t an African “Yes”) and forging links with Vocational Training Colleges and other educational institutes (even though we aren’t one!!).  These were all part of my original assignment plan so it’s good to get them ticked off.

The mathematics homework box is going well.  Doing voluntary mathematics is after dinner entertainment evidently.  I’m excited to get the self education room underway - that’s what the CSG from AVI was for - funded by Wheeler Foundation.

Now the tricky part. I was given some money by some very kind and generous members of Hamilton Uniting Church congregation and it was set aside to use for a special project bringing infants with cerebral palsy and their mothers from remote areas serviced by FMS so they could have specialist treatment here in Arusha - an intensive 4 week program to train the mothers in giving physical therapy to their babies.  The money has paid for bed and board for the families at a guest house in Arusha.  This has been so much more complicated than I had imagined!

Our protocol specified that families must understand that cerebral palsy is not something that has a ‘cure’.  But such is the belief in modern medicine that it has proved impossible to convince the families that their infants will never walk.  The therapy is to strengthen muscles so the infants will be able to hold their heads up and possibly roll over but that is really the limit.

Now I’m worried that all we’ve done is set the families up for a huge let down, giving them unrealistic expectations despite all we’ve said.  And to make matters worse a visit to an eye specialist has shown that two of the babies have no sight at all and one additionally has no hearing.  It seems the mothers did not know, so either the clinic medical officers had not tested for this or had not told the mothers in a way that they understood or believed.  It is heartbreaking.  So the mothers will return to their villages next week with infants that are not only not ‘fixed’ but are now more disabled because they are now blind as well.  I feel like it has all been a disaster! I hope it doesn't stop the families using the clinic services or drive them into the clutches of witchdoctors or evangelical preachers in their search for a cure!  I don’t know how much of this we could have forseen and how much was a Rumsfeld ‘unknown unknown’ as much of what happens is!  More on this next time when I’ve processed what happened - the ethics of it all is so difficult in the context of where these families live and their nomadic lifestyle.   

On a more up-beat note, back to my core mission.  The participants in our program are trained using an apprenticeship model.  The trainers are skilled tradespeople who demonstrate how to do each task and then help the participants to refine their work.  It is “on the job” learning.  At the moment the carpentry and masonry students are building the new teaching and learning space.  It will reduce the crowding in the tailoring room - 28 students is about 10 too many in there - and allow us to give more meaningful tasks to some of the most disabled participants - those who realistically won’t ever be able to use a sewing machine.

We were privileged to be invited to the ‘after party’ for the baptism of the younger sister of James, one of Steve’s local bird watching mates.  It was a lot of fun.  Rachel, the baptismal girl, is 14 years old and will start at secondary school next year.  For this event she was dressed almost like a bride and had a similarly dressed attendant, like a bridesmaid.   It was very surprising but possibly quite new ‘tradition’.  We met James’ grandfather who is very old - the family thinks he may turn 100 next birthday - and also his parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins. I even had a cuddle of his one year old nephew so the infant’s mum could eat her lunch unencumbered.  The party involved food and drink for about 300 family and friends.  All the neighbours from the village were there too.  There was music - a DJ with generator and speakers - and speeches.  I’ll add some pics when Steve returns from Rwanda.  Look at his blog for the story of his trip to speak at a conference in Kigali.

Also this month we have had our annual In-Country Meeting.  The ICM is a chance for all the AVP volunteers in Tanzania to get together to learn from each other and from outside experts.  This year the theme was around inclusivity especially of people with disability but also gender diverse and all the well recognised ‘isms’ - race, age, sex.  It was a very interesting couple of days at a lovely venue up on the crater wall near Karatu called The Retreat.  Staying in such a place is a luxury but it is regarded as a ‘Thank you’ from the program - our normal living conditions are far less salubrious - and it gives that bit of emotional distance from our work to be able to see it more clearly and realistically - something that is hard when you’re in the middle of it.  At ICM we met the volunteers who live in Dar es Salaam and I discovered one is a Melbourne Demons supporter but unfortunately his assignment has just finished so I’m back to feeling like the only Dees supporter in Tz.

December has arrived while I’ve been writing this and so, now this month, we are looking forward to showing our dear friends Lou and Rob Drummond around the northern safari circuit of Tanzania - Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Speke Bay, Lake Manyara and Tarangire.  It’ll be fun.  They are also Africa specialists having had two years in Zimbabwe as Australian Volunteers in the 1990s.

On a sad note my dear Uncle Allan died this week.  We saw him and Auntie Lyn just before we left.  We will not be able to go home for his funeral - it’s just too far from Sakina to Ouyen! - but will be thinking of all the family and missing them enormously this week and next.  It’s a good reminder that we need to try harder to remember to use Skype and stay in touch - has to be part of breakfast time with the 8 hour time difference.

I hope I’ll get another blog post written to wrap up the year at work before we head off on December 28 for our safari, but knowing how long this has taken I wouldn’t be holding my breath in expectation!

Love from Jenny

Tarangire and more

We try to give the participants in our program a variety of experiences in the wider world so last week we had our excursion to Tarangire National Park.  It was a lot of fun but a very looooong day.

Monday, October 14 was a public holiday for Nyerere Day so we were able to hire the school bus belonging to a local private school that could hold all our students, our teachers and various others.  The wheel chairs and the picnic lunch fitted in the lockers under the bus - no hydraulic lifts here; and the four girls who need the wheelchairs were helped onto the bus in the same way you’d ‘help on’ a sack of potatoes!

The drive to Tarangire Gate is about 2 hours but the passengers had been sitting on the bus for quite a while before we left and a few were desperate for a convenience stop just before the turn off the tarmac, so we stopped at the side of the road and they divided, girls to the right, boys to the left, to go behind the bushes.

At the gate it took a while to process the paper work but soon enough we were in and on the lookout for wanyama wa porini - simba, twiga, tembo and their friends.

We were very lucky, we had good views of lions (two very lazy males who had been working their way through a meal of baby elephant) giraffes, buffalo and various antelope.  The young trainee tour guide even stopped the bus for birds so we saw ostrich, Southern ground hornbill, Kori bustard and many vultures.  We despaired of seeing elephants (they are all currently in Lake Manyara NP as you can read in Steve’s blog!), but eventually we saw a few including a few very young ones.  

There were very many (naughty) monkeys at the picnic ground where we stopped for lunch and tourists were not minding the park rules about not interacting with them and making future behaviour worse.  You can’t go wrong over-estimating the stupidity of a very few people!

It was a great day out for everyone, any day that involves a soda must be a red-letter day!

Last week I also progressed a step along the path to becoming a registered tax payer in Tz.  I had tried the week before, going to the TRA with all the required documents listed on the application form, but was told I also needed an ‘Official Letter’.  We argued that no such thing existed or was needed but to no avail. So I went to the Archdiocese to get an Official Letter and they said, “What’s that?”  I had come prepared with what I thought it should say and the nun in charge of such matters dutifully typed it up.  I spell checked it while she watched “Monkey Magic” on the telly then she said I should return the following day after it had been signed by Someone Important.  I have it now so I feel Official.  It’s been too hectic since to return to the TRA but I’m sure when I do there will be another hurdle to clamber over.

This week I have also made some progress on a plan for professional development of the trainers at the centre.  (We can no longer be a ‘college’ with ‘teachers’ or ‘students’ because we are not registered with the education authorities, and we cannot be registered because there is no category for what we do!)  The Catholic order that started the Mission where I work runs a Vocational Training College and a Boys Secondary School with a Deaf Education Unit at Tenguru, just east of Arusha.  I visited there with two of our trainers so they could have collegial discussions on curriculum and pedagogy (or as Mark put it, “I have a new friend!”) and I also visited the secondary school and made a new friend.  I have struggled with explaining money related arithmetic to our deaf students but now, courtesy of Madam Happy, the DP at the secondary school, I have a short video of all the necessary Tz sign language hand signs.  She was very pleased to be filmed on my phone!  We will return there next week and hope to get a collaborative partnership happening.

I have spent quite a bit of the last two weeks on the road including the 5 hour round trip to Moshi driving our four leg amputees for prosthetics fittings at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.  Driving in Tz is never pleasant and on Thursday rain added to the degree of difficulty although it did keep the pikipikis off the road!  It was a successful trip with progress made by all four.  One was even able to try out his new leg and was so pleased to be actually walking!

I have also made progress on the Kiswahili literacy front.  I put a list of the 100 most common words in written swahili on the wall of the classroom / dining room and the students swarmed all over it reading them all out loud!  They are so starved for reading materials.  I am hoping over the next few months to get a collection of books together but then I’ll have to work out how to preserve them from damage and ‘disappearance’.  I have also printed small slips of paper with the most common syllables in swahili for the students to sound out and assemble into words.  Swahili is a totally phonetic language where any letter always makes the same sound so once they know the sounds the rest is easy (maybe!).  I will report on progress.

Next week will be another big week!  We have the Regional Director for AVI who is based in Sri Lanka coming to visit my work place to see what we’re doing together.  All the visitors I’ve shown around have been amazed by our centre and the way our participants tackle the huge challenges they face.  I love showing them off to everyone because they are such an impressive bunch! 

So I’ll have a lot to report next time, I appreciate your interest.

Love from Jenny